Philosophy (Witt) and Communications (Lillie)

In Leisure: The Basis of the Culture, Pieper makes claim that proletarization is a problem that is growing in our society. He depicts that over-investing ourselves leads us to only caring and using extensive energy on their work but not to their family, who gives them their support and meaning of life. This claim caught my eye because it was interesting to understand the unfortunate reason of doing “total work” and to realize that what we were after was actually useless.

Pieper makes this claim by explaining the conditions that lead to proletarization. The causes are the lack of property, pressure to perform well in the corporation and “inner impoverishment of the individual: everyone whose life is completely filled by him work” (58). These are the reasons why people do “total work.” Because of these insecurities, they are inclined to find complete satisfaction and success in life through total work and service, which are just illusions. These in turn, lead us to focus “only” on the work rather than caring and loving your family and other communities that surround you with support and meaning of life.

This claim was interesting because it reveals the sad and unfortunate truth. In the modern society, we work and put our every effort in it to achieve success. By success, I mean earning wealth to support our family, earning respect from the community and earning happiness through what you do. But Pieper’s claim suggests that we neglect our family and happiness, which we were actually trying to earn not miss. We are not earning a title as a respectful father but instead just a professional, a manager, a lawyer and an engineer. We are not earning happiness by wearing ourselves out by the heavy work. We are not even earning the equal amount of money as the effort and time we put in. What we tried to achieve by doing work were actually getting lost in the process of work. This is the unfortunate truth. I have realized that the success we were after by doing “extensive amount” of work was just an illusion.